INTERNATIONAL WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015

Israeli arrested after attack that killed toddler

JERUSALEM: said yesterday it was interrogating Israeli media have dubbed Ettinger as the ’s before the attack, when it announced it had uncovered a their property. Six months ago, authorities signed a year- the suspected head of a Jewish extremist group in the “number one” most wanted Jewish extremist. He has Jewish extremist movement of young settler activists long order preventing Ettinger from entering Jerusalem first arrest of an Israeli suspect following last week’s arson been arrested several times before and banned from the responsible for a June arson attack of the Church of the and the West Bank settlements, saying he posed a danger attack in the West Bank that killed a Palestinian toddler West Bank. Ettinger is also the grandson of the late Rabbi Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish, a prominent there. He moved to the northern city of Tzfat, a hub for and wounded his brother and parents. , an ultranationalist whose party was banned Catholic church near the Sea of Galilee, and a number of Jewish religious mystics. According to the Shin Bet security agency, 23-year-old from Israel’s parliament for its racist views in 1988. Kahane other hate crimes. The Shin Bet at the time accused In a blog post, Ettinger denied the Shin Bet’s accusa- Meir Ettinger was arrested late Monday for “involvement was killed by an Arab gunman in 1990. Ettinger of heading the movement. tion that he leads an extremist organization. in an extremist Jewish organization.” Ettinger has denied leading an extremist movement. Authorities said last week they have filed indictments “There is no terror organization, but there are many, The agency would not say if he is also suspected in His lawyer, Yuval Zemer, told Israel’s Army Radio that against two other young Israeli extremists and arrested many Jews, many more than people think, whose value the July 31 arson attack, but it has accused Ettinger of authorities arrested his client to appease an Israeli public three others in connection with the church arson attack. system is completely different than that of the Israeli heading an extremist movement seeking to bring about outraged by the arson attack. The Shin Bet said Ettinger’s group vandalized a number of Supreme Court or the Shin Bet,” he wrote in a July 30 blog religious “redemption” through attacks on Christian sites “There was no urgent need to arrest here, other than Christian religious sites in the past two years, tried to dis- post. “The laws they are bound by are not the State’s laws and Palestinian homes. some kind of desire to show, ‘Here, we’re doing some- rupt Pope Benedict XVI’s 2014 visit to the Holy Land, and ... but laws that are much more eternal and real.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thing, here, we’re arresting,’” said Zemer. “Of course, what committed “more significant terrorist attacks of arson” Also yesterday, Israeli security forces demolished a pledged “zero tolerance” for Jewish terrorism is better than the number one most wanted target?” against Palestinian homes in the West Bank over the past Jewish settlement house in an outpost of the Eli settle- following a pair of deadly attacks by extremists. The The arrest comes on the heels of a violent spate of year. ment that had been built illegally on private Palestinian toddler was burned to death a day after an attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories that threat- A month before the attack on the church, Ettinger land in the West Bank. COGAT, the defense body that han- anti-gay ultra-Orthodox man stabbed a 16-year-old ened to ignite widespread violence in the region. called on his blog for more attacks on Christian religious dles civilian issues with the Palestinians, said the demoli- Jewish girl during a rampage against marchers at The Shin Bet would not say whether Ettinger had any- sites. He had lived in recent months in unauthorized tion was coordinated with the settlers and there were no Jerusalem’s gay pride parade. The teenage girl later died. thing to do with the attack on the West Bank home, Jewish settlement encampments in the West Bank set up protests. Authorities are now expected to crack down much which killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and severely by the “,” the Shin Bet said, using a term refer- Last week, settlers clashed with Israeli troops as Israeli harder on suspected Jewish extremist cells, particularly injured his parents and 4-year-old brother. ring to radicalized Jewish teen squatters on West Bank bulldozers demolished a contested housing complex in among West Bank settler youths. However, the agency singled out Ettinger two days hilltops who have been known to attack Palestinians and another Jewish settlement in the West Bank. — AP Three Turkish soldiers killed in PKK attacks Militants attack police headquarters with rocket launchers

DIYARBAKIR: Three soldiers were killed in southeastern Turkey yesterday in the latest attacks on security forces blamed on the out- lawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the army and security sources said. Kurdish militants detonated a remote-con- trolled mine as a military convoy passed by in the Arakoy region of Sirnak province bordering Iraq and Syria, the military said. The explosion triggered clashes between Turkish soldiers and PKK rebels, it added. The army said two soldiers had died, and one soldier and one village guard were wounded in the attack by the “separatist terror organisation”, its customary phrase for the PKK. Later yesterday one more soldier was killed and another injured when Kurdish militants attacked with missiles an armoured brigade in the Silopi district of Sirnak, security sources said. The militants on motorbikes also attacked a police headquarters with rocket launchers in Hakkari province without causing any casualties, BAGHDAD: In this Tuesday, July 28, 2015 photo, a man reads a book at the Baghdad the Anatolia news agency said. The PKK has National Library, established by the British in 1920 on donations, in Iraq. At the start stepped up its strikes on the security forces in the of the 2003 US-led occupation, when chaos gripped the capital, arsonists set fire to last two weeks, as Turkish warplanes bomb its the library, destroying 25 percent of its books and some 60 percent of its archives, positions in northern Iraq. DIYARBAKIR: In this Thursday, July 30, 2015 photo, Adnan Seyit sits in his cafe in Diyarbakir over- including priceless Ottoman records. — AP Turkish F-16s bombed PKK targets around the looking the Tigris river, southeastern Turkey. In an abrupt reversal, Turkey and the Kurdish rebels district of Daglica in southeastern Turkey-long appear to be hurtling toward the return of an all-out conflict that plagued the nation for decades, seen as a PKK stronghold-as a reprisal for a mor- before a fragile peace process was launched in 2012. A truce that has helped bring social and eco- Facing IS threat, Baghdad tar attack earlier in the region that lightly wound- nomic stability to Turkey evaporated only a week into the government’s new offensive against the ed a six-year-old girl, the Dogan news agency PKK, which stretches from southeastern Turkey to northern Iraq. — AP digitizes national library said. The spiral of violence sparked by the killing claimed tens of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, an and killed some 260 militants. of 32 pro-Kurdish activists last month in a town explosion hit a natural gas pipeline transporting Ankara is waging a two-pronged cross-border BAGHDAD: The dimly-lit, dust-caked restoration, to either fill in torn edges or on the Syrian border by suspected Islamic State gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey in the eastern “anti-terror” bombing campaign against Islamic stacks of the Baghdad National Library layer the more-delicate documents with militants has left a 2013 ceasefire between province of Kars, the Anatolia news agency said. State (IS) militants in Syria and PKK rebels in Ankara and the PKK in tatters. hide a treasure of the ages: crinkled, yel- a sheer coating to make them more There was no immediate claim but the PKK northern Iraq. But so far the raids have over- According to an AFP toll, 20 members of the lowing papers holding the true stories of durable. has repeatedly targeted energy infrastructure in whelmingly targeted the Kurdish rebels. Turkish security forces have been killed in attacks Turkey in the past. On Sunday, two Turkish soldiers were killed sultans and kings; imperialists and social- The Baghdad National Library, estab- blamed on the PKK since the current crisis began. Turkish warplanes have for over a week car- and 31 wounded in a suicide bombing by a PKK ists; occupation and liberation; war and lished by the British in 1920 on dona- The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by ried out hundreds of sorties over northern Iraq, militant in the east of the country, the first time peace. tions and first overseen by a Catholic Turkey and its Western allies, took up arms for with official media claiming that that they have the group has used the tactic in the current esca- These are the original chronicles of priest, has weathered violent upheaval self-rule in 1984 in an armed struggle which has caused significant damage to PKK infrastructure lation. — AFP Iraq’s rich and tumultuous history - and before. At the start of the 2003 US-led now librarians and academics in occupation, when chaos gripped the Baghdad are working feverishly to pre- capital, arsonists set fire to the library, serve what’s left after thousands of docu- destroying 25 percent of its books and Myanmar admits ments were lost or damaged at the some 60 percent of its archives, including height of the US-led invasion. priceless Ottoman records. Archives from ‘weak’ flood response As Islamic State militants set out to 1977 to 2003 burned to ashes. Earlier destroy Iraq’s history and culture, includ- archives from 1920 to 1977, including as misery spreads ing irreplaceable books and manuscripts sensitive Interior Ministry documents, kept in the militant-held city of Mosul, a had been stored in rice bags and sur- SITTWE: Myanmar’s government yesterday admitted its “weak” major preservation and digitization proj- vived the blaze. response to massive floods had hampered evacuation efforts, as ect is underway in the capital to safe- During “the invasion of Iraq, we had rain-battered Asian nations counted the rising cost of this year’s guard a millennium worth of history. an alternative site for the most important monsoon. In darkrooms in the library’s back books and documents at the Flash floods and landslides in Myanmar have claimed at least offices, employees use specialized light- Department of Tourism,” said Jamal 46 lives and affected some 215,000 people, swallowing huge ing to photograph some of the most- Abdel-Majeed Abdulkareem, acting tracts of land in what the United Nations has described as a “major precious manuscripts. Mazin Ibrahim director of Baghdad libraries and natural disaster”. Tens of thousands of people remain cut off as officials warned Ismail, the head of the microfilm depart- archives. “Then books and the important that swollen rivers are now threatening to inundate low-lying ment, said they’re testing the process documents were exposed to water southern areas of the country. The quasi-civilian government has with documents from the Interior because the American tanks destroyed come under mounting criticism on social media, accused of Ministry under Iraq’s last monarch, Faisal the water pipes and water leaked onto underplaying the scale of the disaster. II, who ruled from 1939 to 1958. these important cultural materials.” It prompted a rare concession from the government which is “Once restoration for some of the old- particularly concerned about its image just months ahead of a er documents from the Ottoman era, 200 Iraqi culture general election in November. to 250 years ago, is completed, we will Around 400,000 pages of documents - ADEN: Soldiers stand on a tank of the Saudi-led coalition deployed on the outskirts of the “The government’s weak response to the disaster led to mis- begin to photograph those onto micro- some dating back to the Ottoman period southern Yemeni port city of Aden on Monday, during a military operation against Shiite understandings about evacuation efforts,” state-backed English- film,” Ismail said. He said the digital - and 4,000 rare books were damaged Huthi rebels and their allies. Pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition language newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported, cit- archives, which will not be made avail- when the pipes broke. They included the retook Yemen’s biggest airbase from Iran-backed rebels in a significant new gain after ing government spokesman Ye Htut. able immediately to the public, is more library’s precious Hebrew archives, most their recapture of second city Aden last month.— AFP Suspicion of officialdom lingers after Myanmar’s previous jun- to ensure their content survive any of which later were moved to ta government was accused of callous indifference in its sluggish future threat. Washington. Yemen pro-government troops response to Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, which left nearly 140,000 A team of experts from the Library of people dead or missing. Restoration Congress visited Baghdad to help assess retake rebel-held base in south Relentless seasonal downpours have lashed much of South The restoration process is nothing the damage and recommended building and Southeast Asia in recent weeks. The annual monsoon is a life- short of microsurgery, and the type dam- a new national library. More than a SANAA: Yemen’s pro-government troops has been targeting the Houthis in an air-cam- line for farmers across Asia but heavy rains and powerful cyclones age to each document is a story - and a decade later, a state-of-the-art, 45,000 - were fighting pockets of resistance outside a paign since March. can also prove deadly. By Tuesday the death toll in India from days key military base in the country’s south on Ministry officials and military leaders from puzzle - on its own. Some manuscripts square-meter (484,380-square-foot) of rain rose to 180, the majority in West Bengal after receding Tuesday, a day after they seized it from Shiite Hadi’s government in exile in Saudi Arabia, waters yielded more bodies. are torn from overuse and aging; others replacement by London-based AMBS rebels, military officials said. returned to the southern city of Aden last Around 1.2 million people have been forced from their homes are burned or stained from attack or sab- Architects is scheduled to open next The capture of the Al-Anad base - once the week and the statement was issued from after rivers burst their banks in the wake of Cyclone Komen-which otage. And then there are some that year. site of US intelligence operations against al- there. In a statement carried by rebel-con- barrelled through the Bay of Bengal late last week. Pakistan mean- were completely fossilized over time - Until then, the Baghdad National Qaeda’s powerful Yemeni affiliate - was a sig- trolled news agency SABA late Monday, the while has seen 118 people die so far, with 810,000 affected, as the combined result of moisture and Library is looking to help those in con- nificant victory for the forces allied to Yemen’s rebels denied the base had been taken. poorly built mud homes collapsed under heavy rains. Scores have scorching temperatures - looking instead flict-ridden areas enjoy and appreciate exiled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in It took several days to capture Al-Anad, also died in Vietnam and Nepal. like large rocks dug up from the earth. Iraqi culture. Library officials say that their battle to reverse the gains of the rebels with pro-government troops, backed by “Those are the most difficult books to sharing Iraqi art and literature is key to known as Houthis. tanks and armored personnel carriers, push- ‘Major natural disaster’ restore,” said Fatma Khudair, the senior combatting terrorism. In recent months, The base was taken by the rebels when ing toward the base as coalition airstrikes Myanmar has designated four states and regions-Rakhine, employee in the restoration department. the library donated some 2,500 books to the conflict intensified in the spring and was cleared the path for their advance. Military Chin, Sagaing and Magway-as “natural disaster” areas, warning “We apply steam using a specialized tool libraries in Iraq’s Diyala province after their main encampment in the country’s officials said allied fighters had cut off the that flooding is spreading southwards. to try to loosen and separate the pages. Iraqi forces recaptured towns there from south. The pro-government forces took 45 main road between al-Anad and the embat- But the nationwide picture remains patchy. “Sometimes, we are able to save those Islamic State militants. prisoners in the battle for the base and were tled city of Taiz for the first time since the Roads are damaged or inundated, phone lines are down and books and then apply other restoration The militants “want history to reflect now marching north, toward another rebel- Houthis took control of it in March. electricity has been cut to large areas, raising fears that tens of techniques, but with others, the damage their own views instead of the way it held military base called Labouza - the largest The fighting in Yemen pits the Houthis and thousands of people-many of whom already live in abject pover- is irreversible,” she added. actually happened,” Abdulkareem said. in the south, the military officials said. troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah ty-are in dire need of help. Technicians sterilize manuscripts and “So when an area is liberated, we send As Al-Anad fell, rebel fighters fled to the Saleh against southern separatists, local and Soldiers loaded aid into helicopters in the Rakhine state capital documents for 48 hours, washing them them books to replenish whatever was nearby hills, the officials added, speaking on tribal militias, Sunni Islamic militants and Sittwe early yesterday, an AFP reporter at the scene said, as res- of dust and other impurities that accu- stolen or destroyed, but also, so that condition of anonymity because they were President Hadi’s loyalists. cuers battled to reach isolated villages. not authorized to talk to reporters. Yemen’s After months of fierce fighting, pro-gov- mulated over time. Then, they go page Iraqis in this area have access to these Flooding has started to recede in many areas around the city, Defense Ministry announced the “liberation ernment forces also recently pushed rebels but thousands of homes and farms have been destroyed, while by page using Japanese tissue, special- materials so they can always feel proud of Al-Anad military base” in a statement late out of Aden and advanced in Taiz, Yemen’s many communities in the rugged and impoverished state remain ized paper for book conservation and of their rich history.” — AP Monday, thanking the Saudi-led coalition that third-largest city.—AP virtually cut off.—AFP